popular culture

The Punch and Judy Show, which has become the Democratic Party’s campaign for presidential nominee, calls for analysis of every last detail. So why not fashion? At this point in time, Hilary wins hands down for her versatile wardrobe effects. Her pastel pantsuits have grown stronger in color, embracing cobalt, coral, rust, turquoise, and ever-cheery yellow. Her matching costume jewelry choices are truly awesome to me, and she drapes a truly elegant scarf round her throat when she wishes.

Gender studies related to clothing first appeared in full force in the 1970s. One of the best, however, is a Smithsonian Institution Press study from 1989, Men and women: dressing the part. Will this year’s presidential election be about two men in suits slugging it out, or be a true battle of the sexes?

Francis Bacon had a studio showroom in South Kensington that was reproduced in a 1930 issue of The Studio. He was one of three designers profiled for “The 1930 Look in British Decoration,” and his interior is sparsely geometric and modern, not the lavish French Art Deco style, but much more Breuer and Bauhaus. I asked Mark Stevens for some clarification about the motives behind Bacon’s visual leanings.

PAB: Does it make sense to you that he artistically gravitated toward the more austere modernistic aspect of the period?

MS: I think his desire was to find what was most radical or “advanced” in the period. A pared-down style probably seemed more challenging than more lush style did. Pared-down furniture was also probably easier – and less expensive – to make.

PAB: What about those white rubber curtains?

MS: Texture and touch was important to him from the first. Later, he would become a master of the flesh, with a truly tactile sense of the body. He often wore a leather jacket.

PAB: Certainly the early 1930s were a time of economic struggle in Britain, and by 1932-3, Bacon was moving away from design and into painting. Do you think that once he became acclaimed as a painter, he found his old work in the decorative arts to be an embarrassment?

MS: English society was not particularly interested in advanced continental design, and Bacon’s business was probably not very successful. Most of his customers were friends. For example, the Australian novelist Patrick White bought a desk. But I think Bacon, in his twenties, simply became more and more interested in painting as he grew older. He was already painting as a teenager in the late 1920s.

PAB: In interview after interview when he was older, Bacon consistently belittled his youthful experience as a designer. Why did he do this?

MS: Many artists like to imagine that they spring fully-formed into the world. They do not enjoy acknowledging that they were ever confused or uncertain.

PAB: The 1920s was the age when modernity shone with such new promise. Do you think this affected Bacon, even though his time as a designer was short?

MS: I doubt Bacon was ever very optimistic about the promise of modernity or that he took seriously the utopian aspirations of modernist design. But he remained interested until the end of his life in creating an environment that represents more than just a fashionable interior and, instead, embodies a powerful worldview. Today he is celebrated for establishing what may be the most chaotic and messy space ever inhabited by a sane artist. In fact, after his death, the artist’s studio – litter and all -- was placed on public view in Dublin. I’m sure that Bacon, who had an appealing sense of humor, occasionally smiled at the contrast between his mature working space and the clean, honed clarity of his youth.

Bacon (1909-1992) is known for being a self-taught “force” in modern figurative painting. His subjects often provoke unease in viewers for their gritty, fleshy looks at the human figure laid bare psychologically. Therefore, I was greatly intrigued when I learned that Bacon could be counted among those fine artists (like Raoul Dufy) who had early stints as designers during the Art Deco years.

I turned to Cullman Center scholar Mark Stevens, who is currently at work, with Annalyn Swan, on a definitive Bacon biography, to give me some insight into what effect those years might have had on Bacon.

PAB: Bacon spent most of 1927 in Paris, where he was exposed to the height of Art Deco artistic energy. When he returned to London, he started up as a furniture and rug designer. Do you think his experiences in Paris led to this development?

MS: Before Bacon went to Paris, he spent time in radical Berlin. There he would have seen the most advanced furniture and rug design, and he also came to know elegant and raffish people interested in whatever was new. In Paris, he discovered Picasso.

PAB: One of my reference books up at the Art Desk says that Bacon considered his furniture designs to be “extremely bad copies of Le Corbusier.” Other books, however, state that his furniture and rug designs were actually quite good.

MS: I wouldn’t call them either extremely bad or extremely good. Remember, he was barely twenty years old. He had no formal schooling in art or design. When considered in that light, his work is remarkably precocious. Historically, however, it just amounts to an interesting example of period design. His pieces have flair, but are not especially original.

PAB: Bacon himself called his designs unoriginal and heavily influenced by contemporary French design. However, doesn’t his work seem to reflect a variety of influences from the period, including English and German modern trends?

MS: I’m not an expert in the design of that period – yet! -- but, yes, he seems to draw upon a variety of sources. Creating a pastiche is what most young artists do.

PAB: Did his early work with interiors help him with his later paintings?

MS: In his paintings, Bacon often sets his figures in an abstract geometric space that may well recall his immersion in the edgy designs of the twenties and thirties. The furniture in some paintings is also reminiscent of his early designs.

The Library is home to the Cullman Center for Scholars and Writers. Every year, a new group comes in with fascinating projects, and work extensively with the Research Library’s collections. This year, we were privileged to have well-known art critic and Pulitzer Prize-winning author Mark Stevens as a fellow. Mark, who has written about Willem De Kooning, is working on a biography of the famous twentieth century English painter Francis Bacon.

During my research into the Art Deco years, I ran across the fact that Bacon was a furniture and rug designer from 1929 to 1933, and had been influenced by travel to Berlin (1926) and Paris (1927). He lived and breathed the artistic atmosphere of that fascinating era, only to break off his design work and turn to figurative oil painting fulltime. Knowing that Mark has been working away downstairs, I couldn’t resist the opportunity to question him about Bacon’s early years. The next several posts, on April 29 and May 1, brief interviews with Mark Stevens, will recount what I learned from him.

What happens to fashion when the global economy becomes strained? The answer isn’t clear, by any means, but there are hints from past circumstances. Generally, clothing stays conservative, or doesn’t vary from the ideas seen in the last pre-troubled seasonal lineup. I’d made some New Year’s predictions which seem to be falling short of expectations. Baby doll styles, shrunken jackets, and giddy colors can still be seen for sale en masse. The only thing I predicted that seems to be turning out as I’d hoped is a steady drumbeat for ecologically-minded, or green, fashion.

Which brings me to the 1930s, a time when economic bad news was pervasive. Ironically, some of the clothing to come out of that decade proved to be stylish, and came to be labeled as “classical.” Men’s suits, for example, received accolades for being glamorous: well cut, smart lapels, and textural dash. This had everything to do with the fact that Hollywood and its talkies had a great impact on popular culture of that period. Movie stars are still considered fashion icons. Financial recession these days, however, will mean that innovation is stifled. Lack of cash will force designers and companies to sit on big changes in garments. Look for classical to have a strong run this year…

Ancient peoples, especially the Egyptians, understood that perfume was both a luxury and a necessity. I’m running low on one of my favorite perfume scents. Fortunately for me, I won’t have to head out to one of the rather intimidating old-time New York emporia featured in the illustration below.

I only have to trot up the street to Saks!

The packaging of perfume, now more commonly known as branding, is a subtle business in itself. A magnificent overview of this ingenuity is richly represented in an Art title called Masterpieces of the perfume industry. You can find even more good reading by trying the following subject headings: perfume and incense; perfume bottles; miniature perfume bottles; perfume paraphernalia; scent bottles; and even cologne bottles.

Isn’t it interesting that, when searching for books on perfume bottle design, I found the most titles on the subject appeared in the 1980s? I wonder if there is a reason behind this, or if the “me decade” just made it a natural topic for investigation? Sometimes a quick visual metaphor for the 1980s still pops into my mind: Nancy Reagan in a red ball gown and a tiara.

The cloche hat was all the rage in the Art Deco decades. The bell-shaped cloche had a close fit and narrow, dipped brim suited to the shortened, or bobbed, hair of the young flapper. She was a new incarnation of the modern woman, with places to go and things to do. Why, she’d even smoke cigarettes in public!

Want to have a good laugh? Or maybe purchase something, once the offerings are made clear? Go onto www.20sgangstercostumes.com and get yourself a flapper costume. I think my first memory of this stereotypical dress was during an episode of the original Star Trek television series, when Captain Kirk and his landing party ended up on a planet where everybody dressed and acted like 1920s gangsters and molls.

A colleague of mine at the Library knows a place in the Garment District where you can go and have your own cloche hat constructed for you! You can pick out the fabric and trim, and even watch the hat being blocked. We’ve always meant to go there, but invariably we get distracted by something or other at work. One day we will go—if only to release our inner flapper!

Well, The New York Times Style Magazine offered its “Men’s Fashion Spring 2008” issue on Sunday. The emphasis was on hard-edged masculinity, a trend to be expected now that troubled times and belt tightening are in order. Although the occasional pale pink shirt could be found in an ad here and there… The emphasis was on hard-edged masculinity, a trend to be expected now that troubled times and belt tightening are in order. Although the occasional pale pink shirt could be found in an ad here and there…

Here’s a rather appropriate quote I found in my research papers for “A Rakish History of Men’s Wear,” from an old-time academic, Friedrich Vischer (1807-1887), writing an essay entitled “Fashion and Cynicism” in 1879:
“We cannot escape fashion once it has assumed the place of traditional dress. As we just said, fashion represents through and through the keenly roused spirit of modern culture, including, to be sure, all its bad habits, but fashion represents spirit.”

My Art Deco research shows that the fashion for a slender woman in artistic depiction evolved roughly in the waning decades of the 19th century. Those familiar with Art Nouveau will remember the elongated feminine models favored by Alphonse Mucha and Gustav Klimt. There is another culprit, however, who endowed the attenuated feminine figure with erotic force. Aubrey Beardsley (1872-1898) created erotic sketches that displayed the human form in a new light. His pen and ink drawings, particularly his plates illustrating the tale of Salome, are rife with sexual angst.

Beardsley’s drawings for The Yellow Book (1894-1897) were masterful renderings of his contemporary society. The matron illustrated above has opulent curves that lose out against the growing movement toward Modernism. Anything angular, elongated, and suggestive of lithe speed fit the new Modernist aesthetic. And as Ann Hollander noted in her Seeing Through Clothes, this Modernist viewpoint was teaching people to see themselves as shapes, even those angular and geometric in nature.

Beardsley helped this trend by using differing body types in his erotic drawings in a satirical fashion, and having the very slim figures be the sexually charged objects of desire. One of the best biographies of his life, which can be found in the Art Division, has an apt title: Aubrey Beardsley: A Slave to Beauty.

Predictions: 2008 is a Leap Year and an election year, which means that fashions will be cautious and unwilling to push extremes. However, the fashion and design industries will loosen their death grip on some of the last few years' more annoying trends. The 70s craze will die down, purses and totes will become a little more functional, and shoes with street wear durability will finally eclipse those maddening 3-inch+ heels. Eco-friendly clothing and products will grow in popularity. The shopping bag design explosion will continue. (Lord & Taylor: back to the drawing board.)

Resolutions: This blog promises to deliver certain goods in the new year. Entries will be shorter, tighter, and have more links to Library and outside resources. News and comment related to fashion and design history will be culled from newspapers, Newsweek, shelter magazines, good old Vogue, and new, exciting publications. I'll be tracking exhibitions at the "go to" places: the Costume Institute at the MMA, the Victoria & Albert, Cooper-Hewitt, and FIT, among others.

And, with my colleagues at the Popular Culture Association in mind, I'll be exploring those often unseen, yet persistent connections that make everything old seem new again.

After all, we are all HERE BY DESIGN.

And a last resolution that will be no trouble to keep: Henry Salamanca, a good man gone too soon, will never be forgotten by his many friends at NYPL.